Re-Thinking Late Antique Armenia: Historiography, Material Culture, and Heritage

This book questions the place of Armenian visual and material culture in the period known as Late Antiquity, at a time when Armenia is usually presented as an in-between space defined by surrounding external entities: the Roman and the Persian, and later Arab world. The volume includes articles that confront this notion both from the perspective of art history, architecture, and archaeology, and from a historiographical point of view, which examines the reception of Armenian arts by scholars from Italy, Russia, and France. The articles in this richly illustrated volume aim to reposition Armenia as one of the forces of artistic creation and mediation to be reckoned with within the Mediterranean and Eurasian space of Late Antiquity. This project draws on the papers presented at the conference “Re-Constructing Late Antique Armenia (2nd–8th Centuries CE). Historiography, Material Culture, Immaterial Heritage” that took place in February 2022 at the Center for Early Medieval Studies in Brno, Czech Republic.

Introduction 
Ivan Foletti & Adrien Palladino
Late Antiquity and Armenia. From Marginalized Region to Creative Force
 
Articles

Patrtick Donabédian
Culmination of a Late Antique Legacy? The Golden Age of Armenian Architecture in the Seventh Century 
Nazénie Garibian
The First Armenian Christian Sanctuaries and Shrines. Reconsidering the Received Tradition
Lilit Mikayelyan
Greco-Roman Ornamental Motifs in Armenia and Iran. Commonality and Sustainability of Tradition (5th–11th Centuries)
Zaruhi Hakobyan
The Image of St Christopher Cynocephalus in Early Medieval Sculpture of Armenia
Adrien Palladino
From Desperate Solidarity to Dispassionate Eye. Shifting French Perspectives on Early Medieval Armenian Art (ca 1894–1929)
Annalisa Moraschi
A Mutual Presentation. Precocious Interests for Medieval Armenia in Nineteenth-Century Italy
Beatrice Spampinato
A Theoretical Topography of Architecture. On the Problematic Connections between Rome, Byzantium, and Armenia in Italian Historiography (1914–1945)
Ruben Campini
Art from the Borders? Wolfgang Fritz Volbach and the Localization of a Group of Early Christian Ivory Pyxides in the Caucasus
Ivan Foletti & Pavel Rakitin
Re-Inventing Late Antique and Early Medieval Armenia in World War II Soviet Union

Afterword
Christina Maranci
Late Antique Armenia. Past, Present, and Future